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boylan; when you are feeding your PZ800 with the 24p output on this player, does it make any difference on your PZ800 when you set it to display 24p or do you still get the 'flicker'?

I set the player and the TV to 24p which puts the PZ800 in its 48Hz cinema mode. Maybe it's just me but the flicker on the PZ800 doesn't really bother me when watching a movie. Kinda feels like being in a movie theater. My eyes adjust, I guess. The menus look a little weird but not the movies.

My 55 arrived, just fine and on time, however...
I had to take a day off work to receive it.
I live alone & my currier leaves Nothing if I'm not here to sign!

Pulled out my BD30, and installed the 55, ran thru setup, and every disc I throw at it... it Gives me a "NoREAD", and tells me to clean the disc!

My discs are pristeen!!
Figures!

Any thoughts??
I've rechecked and rechecked my settings, and I can't find a thing wrong.

Sounds like someone between the factory or your door dropped the ball. And by "ball" I mean your Blu-ray player. This is not a set-up issue. Your player needs to be replaced. If you got it from circuit city you might be able to swap it out at a local store, assuming they have stock. But in any case, contact the place you bought it and see what they can do.

I set the player and the TV to 24p which puts the PZ800 in its 48Hz cinema mode. Maybe it's just me but the flicker on the PZ800 doesn't really bother me when watching a movie. Kinda feels like being in a movie theater. My eyes adjust, I guess. The menus look a little weird but not the movies.

YMMV of course.

-CB

Boylan13,

I also have the a PZ800, 50". Are there visible benefits when setting the BD35 output to 4:4:4? I'm asking because the PZ800 is one of the few TV that can accept such input signal and need to know if the benefits are worth buying another Blu-ray player.

Are the audio hook ups/settings confusing? It seems there are lots of ways to set up the audio.
My receiver has 6 channel inputs for 5.1 lossless audio through analog. I can't seem to see enough inputs for 7.1
So is the following correct:
I use six analog cables to hook them up. Then I put "analog Audio Output" to 2+5.1 and disable secondary audio?

If this is not right can any one give me a step by step to get 5.1 sound through audio for lossless sound

If your receiver supports HDMI audio decoding (hdmi 1.1 or above), then use one HDMI cable. If it does not, then set the analog output to 2+5.1 and use 6 RCA cables. You do not need to disable secondary audio output. That is only necessary if you want to bitstream the native codecs over HDMI.

FYI Boston area Circuit City stores are starting to show both players in stock as of today. I picked up a 55 in Portsmouth, NH this morning and am playing with it now. The remastered Fifth Element looks and sounds fantastic.

I set the player and the TV to 24p which puts the PZ800 in its 48Hz cinema mode. Maybe it's just me but the flicker on the PZ800 doesn't really bother me when watching a movie. Kinda feels like being in a movie theater. My eyes adjust, I guess. The menus look a little weird but not the movies.

YMMV of course.

-CB

Hi Chris,

I have a PZ800 and the 24p at 48hz flicker is pretty annoying for me. Should I continue to have the blu-ray output 24p and set the panny to 60hz or use a different output from the 55. What am I missing by running 24p 60hz versus the 24p 48hz on the panny?

If your receiver supports HDMI audio decoding (hdmi 1.1 or above), then use one HDMI cable. If it does not, then set the analog output to 5.1 and use 6 RCA cables. You do not need to disable secondary audio output. That is only necessary if you want to bitstream the native codecs over HDMI.

-CB

Chris,
Am I to understand that you get the full lossless audio over analog even with secondary audio on?

logitech has the 55 in its database as of when i make this post but not the 35, pretty odd but they may be updating to include it now.
the included "custom" buttons seem a bit odd as it has things like multi disc control and pro logic, as i havent actually seen the remote yet, i'm guessing that it can also serve as the remote for a reciever and tv. also it seems the codes may be shared with a multi disc changer

"
" Pulled out my BD30, and installed the 55, ran thru setup, and every disc I throw at it... it Gives me a "NoREAD", and tells me to clean the disc! "

This is what happened to my Panny10a. It's happened to both new and old users of panny 10, maybe even 30 model owners. It's the laser!! It's also something that made me try the Sony550 first(got it last night). I'm going to give the Sony a trial run(so far, so good). If/when someone can give a reasonable comparison between the 55 & 550 I still might try the 55 as soon as it is available at my local c/c. I like the Sony a lot. I love my Panny and will re-love it more when I get it fixed. I'd like some feedback on 55 AQ from previous Panny model owners. I know I loved my 10a AQ, in spades.

I also have the a PZ800, 50". Are there visible benefits when setting the BD35 output to 4:4:4? I'm asking because the PZ800 is one of the few TV that can accept such input signal and need to know if the benefits are worth buying another Blu-ray player.
Thanks

There isn't a "setting" for 4:4:4. The new players just output the video signal that way over HDMI. The BD30 and BD50 were pretty good with their PHL chroma processor, the 35/55 are even better. Is it a huge improvement? Probably not that dramatic on a 50-inch screen from average viewing distances, but it becomes more noticeable the larger you make the image.

The BD35/55 are also better at SD upconversion than their predecessors. what player do you have now? Is it an older Panasonic or is it another brand?

Same problem for me with my Optoma HD80 projector. There seems to be no way to force 24p, which is a real shame since I otherwise really like the BD55. I wonder if a future firmware update might address this issue.

Chris,
Am I to understand that you get the full lossless audio over analog even with secondary audio on?

Absolutely. The only reason you need secondary audio set OFF to bitstream is that the Panasonic doesn't have Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD *encoders* (it has decoders), but this is not unique to the Panasonic players. No BD players have DTS-HD or TrueHD encoders.

In order to be able to mix the secondary audio feed (which is normally PCM) with the primary Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD bitstream, the player would have to be able to encode the PCM signal to the native format, then mix these two audio tracks together to output a new Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD bitstream. Can't do that without an encoder.

On the other hand, if you let the player decode the Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD track to PCM, then it can happily mix in the secondary audio track and output this as part of a newly remixed multi-channel L-PCM track.

Make no mistake, your beautiful Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD lossless tracks *are* being decoded to PCM before they are converted to analog. PCM is how they started life in the studio - they're converted to Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD simply to save bandwidth. It's just a question of whether you want to decode to PCM in the player or in the receiver. If you decode to PCM in the player, then you can still access the Secondary Audio track on BonusView content while enjoying the lossless audio.

So the answer is yes - you can have your lossless cake and eat your secondary audio track too if you use PCM output over HDMI or multi-channel analog output from the player.

I set me player to enhanced RGB instead of standard. Is this recommended for a rear projection lcd 60inch (KDF-60WF655)? Has anyone played around with the video settings to see what the optimal for DVD upscaling. Does the video settings effect Blu ray playback?

Received my BD35 today...hooked it up and played Indie's Crystal Skull. Amazing pq. Wow factor is there. Used the "user" setting with sharpness to 3. Tried Reststop and College Road Trip dvd..so so. My XA2 is better on the upconverting side so the pannie will only be used for BD.

cheezz

After having witnessed the mugging of a snail by a fellow snail, the investigating officer asked the DMP-BD30 what happened to which the BD player replied "I don't remember...it happened so fast."

OK my first experience almost out of the box with the 35 is like wow/amazing. Glad I finally have a player. When I first turned it on, it told me the initial setting were already done automatically, something about the Panasonic Viera link. That is all well and fine. But looking at this owners manual, wow, it is damn confusing all the settings that are possible both video and audio. It is going to take time and research to make sure I make full use of this. At least I am already amazed as it is .

I have a PZ800 and the 24p at 48hz flicker is pretty annoying for me. Should I continue to have the blu-ray output 24p and set the panny to 60hz or use a different output from the 55. What am I missing by running 24p 60hz versus the 24p 48hz on the panny?

Thanks,

Jay

Hi, Jay,

If you don't like the Panny's 48 Hz mode, then you can disable the 24p mode on either the TV set or the player. It probably isn't going to make a big difference which place you turn it off.

If you disable it on the player, then the player will convert the 24P content to 1080p/60 output by adding in frames. If you leave it as 24P on the player but turn it off on the TV side then the TV will convert the 24p content to 1080p/60 for display. Some people see judder from the mis-matched cadence (some frames are repeated more than others in order to get the 60 Hz frame rate).

I'd say you're probably better off turnning it off on the player. This way any 1080i/60 content on Blu-ray (like you get for some nature films and concert videos) will be sent over to the TV at 1080p/60 instead of 1080p/24 (potentially eliminating one level of telecine artifacts).

This might sound strange but did you try turing off Vieralink in the Panny set-up menu? This should disable HDMI-CEC, and might produce different behavior.

But really at this point you should be calling Panasonic support to see what they say. Seems like the only people who have had this happen so far have been owners of 720p projectors. But if your projector says it does support a 1080p/24 input signal then there's no reason I can think of that you shouldn't be able to select 1080p resolution and 24 fps in the player's menu. Might be a bug.